Combining agriculture and technology, one Nebraska company is helping farmers by telling them the right time to apply fertilizer to their crops.

Sentinel Fertigation gives data-driven recommendations to improve the efficiency of producers' fertigation operations. The Lincoln-based company utilized its N-TimeTM Fertigation Management System to anticipate crop nitrogen needs and provide farmers with proactive fertigation scheduling recommendations.

“What we do is, we work with agronomic service providers, we get both the agronomic service providers and the farmers enrolled within our software platform," said CEO and founder of Sentinel Fertigation, Jackson Stansell. "The software automatically sources satellite imagery for every field that is enrolled in our platform, image is analyzed and what we do is quantify the crop nitrogen status."

The concept of using optical sensor measurements to inform fertigation recommendations was first started in the state in the mid-1990s by Dr. Jim Schepers and his research team at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Stansell joined that team of researchers while doing his masters in 2019. While at UNL, he lead the advancement of sensor-based techniques for making fertigation recommendations through on-farm research trials and software development. Stansell said the efforts of the research team resulted in the development of the sensor-based fertigation (SBF) management framework.

Sentinel Fertigation was founded in September 2021, with the goal of bringing the software developed at UNL into the commercial market, and to allow producers to benefit from the technology scale. Stansell said their goal is to also grow their team to continue to innovate on the technology, and drive better solutions in the long-term for farmers.

Until late March, the company was a one-man band. Stansell then added an implementation specialist who works directly with farmers and with the agronomic service providers; he also worked with the Ag data support. The company now also has full-time software engineers.

Sentinel Fertigation was able to put numbers to where the crop is in terms of nitrogen. They do it in real-time, but they can also see the crop in terms of nitrogen status in about a week in advance.

"The software at that point will deliver a text message to the farmer, that says whether or not fertilizer is necessary, the way we are approaching that is, we are only going to send a text through the system if fertilizer is required," Stansell said.

The significant increases in the cost of fertilizer over the past year have caused concern among farmers and ranchers in the state.

“For farmers, it is a negative thing for them if they are spending more on fertilizer than they need to, because it’s a large part of their cost of production," Stansell said.

Stansell added even those who live around heavy agricultural regions, and use ground water, can benefit from the Sentinel Fertigation technology.

“If we have too much nitrogen fertilizer at a time and the crop doesn’t need it, it will essentially get lost in the environment, and that lost is an environmental impact and a lost profit," Stansell said.

The software Sentinel Fertigation offers is primarily utilized by commercial corn operations, but the company is looking to expand their scope to include various crop types in the future, including those commonly grown in western Nebraska.

“We are exploring other opportunities, specifically cotton, potatoes, wheat, are probably the next three we will be looking at, significantly that have similar response from an imagery standpoint to corn," Stansell said.

The cost for farmers to use the technology is $7.25 per acre. Last year, some farmers took part of the company's pilot program, as they wanted to give it a try to the technology.

"I think that's a really smart practice for farmers, because they often get burned by new technology," Stansell said. "They shouldn't throw it out there on every acre until they know how it will perform for their operation."

Stansell also mentioned a lot of their work this past spring consisted on knocking on doors and working with network partners to get people to try the technology.

"Fortunately, we had a solid research footprint over the past three years that has allowed us to make connections in the state, and we have some great agronomic partners that got on board," Stansell said. "We have cover and expanded from northeast Nebraska all the way to wester Nebraska and down to Kansas, we have had a good spread this year."

He said the more data farmers have on their products, the more they will maximize their market opportunities.

“We want to be in the position to help farmers leverage and have the opportunity and achieve some of the profit gains that might be seen within these markets and opportunities," Stansell said.

The company is targeting a national footprint for the long-run. Right now the majority of their efforts are in Nebraska, Colorado and Kansas.